Freezing Time
by Girlygirl
Summary: It had finally come full circle, he was 22 today, but Piper knows that living through the most important times in his life was the best part. One shot.


Well, finally a Charmed fic from me that isn't just another companion piece to my first story, _And then all the pieces fit. _It is a Piper/Chris fic because I love them and I still wish that TBTB would have had more Mother/Son moment in season 6. This is a fic about the moments Piper find important in Chris life as she raises him and watches him grow. I own nothing and please review.

**Freezing Time**

Piper held him for the first time when she was all sweaty and he was crying. She knew that he was only trying to talk to her best he could; she understood him. She breathed out 'Christopher' when the doctor asked him name and she could feel sleep calling her. Still she smiled at the fact that her baby boy would be the only person to tell his parents his name, before she passed out. Chris's breathing matched her own as he slept beside her as Leo watched them with the sun streaming through the window.

* * *

It was almost his first birthday and Piper looked towards his high chair where he was happily eating a banana, as she planned a big party in her head. Chocolate was his favorite cake flavor, or was it 'would be his favorite'? She wasn't sure but she knew she missed the son from the future and decided to make chocolate for him anyway. And maybe balloons, but nothing too small, like say the size of a marble. She could hear Wyatt laughing in another room with Leo and she wondered it that would someday be Chris and Leo? Oh how she missed her grown up son so much that her heart hurt. Tears slowly made their way down her face but she didn't make any sound, she didn't want to ruin the quiet calm that filled the kitchen. Her younger son, on the other hand, didn't mind ruining anything.

"Mama," Piper whipped around to look at Chris who starred back at her with banana all over his face. He gurgled at her as he held out his hand to her with banana dripping off his little fingers. She moved towards him and as she gets closer he made grabbing jesters with his hands. She picked him up, not caring if he got banana all over her and looked him in the eye.

"What did you say, baby?" he clicked his two top and bottom teeth together as he smiled at her.

"Mama," he giggled as he gently tugged her hair, he'd always liked her hair, but she didn't care because his first word had been 'mama'. She smiled as he rested his head in the crock of her neck; he was still with her.

* * *

Tears cascaded down her face and no matter how much she wiped at them they still came. He'd turned five that May and in about five minutes the bus would be there to pick him up for his first day of school. It had never been this hard with Wyatt. With Wyatt, they'd all watched him get on the bus and as it pulled out of sight she let some tears fall with a smile. With Chris though, she was a mess of emotions and fears. When he was older he'd save the world, he'd make sure it stayed safe and good. Chris was good magic and strong will all rolled into one and he'd sacrifice himself in a heartbeat. Chris had been born from hidden love and that was always the purest. How could she risk sending him out into the world and something happening? Something changing him? The sound of the bus coming around the corner pulled her out of her thoughts and she was just about to call her boys when she heard them coming down the stairs. Leo appeared behind her as she watched her boys put on their shoes.

"Have a good day buddy," Leo ruffled Chris's dark hair as Chris smiled up at him. "Look out for your brother today, okay Wyatt." Wyatt nodded at his father's request as the two of them took off towards the sidewalk. Leo grabbed her hand as the bus came closer. Suddenly Chris was running back towards her.

"Can you make me oatmeal cookies for after school?" his big green eyes looked up and into her dark ones and she nodded; he'd told her oatmeal was his favorite when he was older. He wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her as Wyatt called him. Chris was just about to leave but stopped to look back up at his mother again.

"Thanks mom, I love you." He bolted for the bus then to join Wyatt and she watched it pulled away. Piper didn't know anything better in the world then hearing him say that.

* * *

She saw him push the balloon out of his way, through the side of her eye, as he joined her in the kitchen. He was careful not to touch anything even though everything was going.

"Mom, it's just a few friends, not the whole school." He smiled at her, a piece of dark hair falling in his face as he brushed it away.

"I know, but I wanted you to have all your favorites." She pulled the lid off a pot and the smell of tomato sauce filled his noise.

"But, I like everything you make." He looked around the kitchen again and it hit him; she was making everything he'd ever eaten.

"Oh, thank you sweetheart, that's why there is so much." She wiped her hand on her apron and looked at him.

"No, no, mom, just one thing would have been fine." He moved to her, took a wooden spoon and started stirring the pasta that was now overflowing on the stove.

"But it's your 16th birthday and I want you to have everything you love." She touched his cheek. He was her height already and more and more he began to look like the 22 year old him that she still missed sometimes.

"I already have everything I love." He waved his hand and the only thing left in the kitchen beside him and his mother was the pasta and the oatmeal cookies he smelled in the oven.

"Chris, you just made the pizza disappear, you love pizza." She placed her hand on her hips as she looked at him. She couldn't believe he was 16 already. He hopped up onto the counter with smiling eyes.

"Yeah, but you can make it another night, tonight pasta and cookies is all I want."

"Your friends are going to be here soon it's almost seven, are you all ready?" he nodded as she drained the pasta noodles and placed them back into the pot so she could find a serving bowl.

"Yeah, and please mom, no checking on us every five minutes we'll be fine." They were having a small party in the finished basement and she'd promised to leave him alone tonight.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." She rolled her eyes at him and he rolled his back. "I got you something, it's on the table." He followed her gaze and found his eyes resting on a small wrapped gift and orbed it to him. Piper dumped the pasta into a bowl before following suit with the sauce and half watched him, half stirred the pasta as he opened his gift. Underneath the paper lay a small framed picture of him at 22 playing toys with a baby Wyatt and Chris smiled.

"At least I was older once." She laughed a little.

"We got you something else too but you'll have to wait until tomorrow when it just all of us." He jumped off the counter and hugged her from behind as she continued to stir with one hand and placed her other over his intertwined fingers.

"I don't need anything else mom, I don't need anything at all. The fact that I'm turning 16 and you're alive to share it with me is the best present by a long shot." She turned to hug him properly. So, he did remember.

"That was all you baby." She whispered into his hair as tears slid down her face. They stayed like that until Phoebe called him.

"Your friends are starting to arrive, Chris." She stuck her head into the kitchen and he nodded at her.

"Go have fun," Piper kissed his head and he nodded before leaving, waving as he made his way to the front door.

* * *

Piper stood in the door frame of her dark haired son's room and marveled at the fact that he'd be 18 tomorrow and graduating in a month's time. Every time she closed her eyes she could see the doctor placing him in her arms for the first time. He was now much taller then her, his eyes a darker green then the ones she'd first seen 18 years ago and his hair short in comparison to two years ago. He was his own person, a brilliant witch, a loyal friend and as stubborn as she was. In so many ways he reminded her of herself but better and she couldn't have been more proud of him. He was perfect and she didn't know how she'd been blessed with such a strong son.

"He's all grown up," Piper jumped, so lost in thoughts of her son that she didn't hear Paige slid up beside her.

"Too quickly." Piper agreed with a small smile. Together they watched him, the way his chest rose and fell with each breath, the way his leg hung off the edge and the way his face seemed so much more peaceful in his sleep. Paige held her older sister's hand as Piper itched to be able to rock him to sleep again.

"He's going to be 18 tomorrow; this is as far as I go with him. From here on in it's all him and I'm constantly holding my breath in fear that something bad is going to happen." Piper looked at Paige, sometimes she couldn't believe everything that had happened in her life but she wouldn't give back Paige for anything in the world.

"Piper we are the Charmed Ones so you might as well breathe because I can guarantee something bad will happen but we get through it and do it all over again. That's the way it works around here and that's the way we've raised our kids. Chris is a strong, loyal, powerful witch who'd parents taught him to fight for what he believes in. If this is your stop and his ride now then he'll be fine, he'll be better then fine. You know that, look what he did to save the world. He's always been like you and you're the best person I know." Piper hugged the half whitelighter half witch; Paige laughed.

"I've got to get to bed and you should too. Tomorrow he'll be expecting chocolate chip pancakes. It is his birthday you know!" Piper laughed.

"You're telling me, I'm the one who had to give birth to that head." She wiped tears from her eyes as she watched Paige disappear into her room before turning back to Chris. "Aunt Paige is right, mom, you should get to sleep." Chris was looking at his mother with sleep in his voice and half opened eyes. She smiled at him as he sat up in bed and she moved to sit beside him; she ruffled his hair like Leo had done so many times before.

"It'll be your birthday in two more minutes," he glanced at the digital clock on his night table and grinned.

"Do you know you do this every year?" he asked her and she gave him a 'do what' look. "You…you… I don't know, reminisce I guess."

"You just keep on surprising me is all, how did you turn out so good?" she laughed with him.

"Because you are my mother." Simple, blunt, truthful; that was her son. She kissed his forehead and told him to get back to bed before leaving only to pause in the door frame to look at him. In the few seconds it had taken her to move across his room he'd already fallen back asleep with his leg hanging off the bed and his face so close to the edge she thought he might fall. And like the mother in the Robert Munch book _'I'll Love you Forever'_ she got down on her hands and knees and crawled back towards his bed which she rested against to watch him.

"Happy Birthday baby," she whispered as the clock flashed midnight; he mumbled in his sleep.

* * *

All Piper could think about was how it seemed to have come full circle. As she watched him over the red flames that were the candles on his birthday cake, she couldn't believe he was twenty-two today. He'd grown into the man she vividly remembered. He looked up at her with laughing eyes as he smiled at something Wyatt said but the second their eyes met he stilled. There, staring back at her were the same deep, bold, unsure green eye that had stared at her from the doorway that day in the past. But as quickly as she saw them he blinked and they were gone.

"Wait," she found herself mumbling, quite enough that the cheering drown it out but he still heard her. Truth be told she wasn't talking to him; she was talking to the whiteligher who had babbled on about 'future consequences'. His eyebrows rose at her in a questioning gaze, and she shut her eyes tightly before opening them to him again. The party and people around them continued.

"Cake for everyone?" it wasn't so much a question but as she asked it her eyes never left her son's and as she moved into the kitchen with said cake he followed her.

"Mom," Piper didn't answer him, she couldn't let herself get lost in the way his voice sounded, the way it reminded her of the first time he'd called her that. She didn't have a snowballs chance in hell as the memories came crashing back. They were fighting in the attic; Chris fighting the demon and her fighting Chris because he wanted to fight the demon.

**_"_**_Well, whatever it is, it obviously doesn't happen until you're born, so save it. You got it?"_ she mouthed the words as they developed sound in her head. His eyes shot down before looking back up at her like a lost little boy.

**_"_**_I got it, mum."_ And Piper had never heard anything as wonderful as that; she smiled a side smile at him but she was bursting with joy.

**_"_**_Huh?"_ She dumbly answered back. For someone who could think in the middle of a life or death fight she couldn't think now.

"Mom, mom?" Chris' voice pulled her back.

"I know, I know, you want a big piece." she grabbed the knife from the drawer before sliding it clean through the ice cream cake.

"No, well yeah I do, but… is everything okay?" he asked, grabbing the plates from the cabinet and handing them to her.

"Who do you ask, baby?" she placed the piece of cake on one of the plates and handed it to him.

"You said 'wait' mom, wait what?" he put the cake on the counter beside him as he fixed her with a stare but she just continued cutting.

"Yeah, I thought I'd counted twenty-one candles instead of twenty-two. I was wrong, there was twenty-two." Piper could lie when need be, on the spot if she had too, and she could fool the whole world.

"You're lying through your teeth mom, 'wait' what?" The whole world except her youngest son; he was just like her after all. Piper turned to look up at him then and her breath caught. There he stood, her son, dressed in the same clothes he'd been wearing when he first appeared in their attic.

"What?" he looked down at himself, had he spilled something? She shook her head at him, how do you tell someone they look so much like themselves?

"You were twenty-two when you left me and you're twenty-two today."

"I remember," Deep inside his head he still had blurred memories of that time. She placed the knife on the counter and turned to be face to face with him.

"I was so mean to you and you still loved me. I didn't deserve your love yet I still got it."

"And you'll always have it mom." He didn't understand where she was going with this.

"I know that I'll always have your love, Chris, but how about his? I couldn't save him." She questioned, banging the counter with her palm for emphasis. He looked confused and taken aback at the same time but she didn't give him time to answer. "Ever since you were born I was always more protective of you then I ever was with Wyatt."

"I know. Sometimes I felt like I couldn't breath." He told her honestly, his mouth turning up at the end like she remembered.

I was always so scared that something was going to change you. I was scared that you wouldn't turn out as good as you did because I wasn't a good enough mother." Chris' had seen him mother many a thing but scared had never been one of them.

"You were the best mother who was always on my side. You made sure I knew how much you loved me, and you never treated me any differently then Wyatt. Neither of us was ever better then the other to you and nothing changed me, it's still me." And right then he understood that for twenty-two years she had never forgiven herself for letting him die. "He's still me and I know that he loves you. He loves you for making sure I was born and for making him the person he was and for loving him so much. And I know that if he had the choice to do it all over again he'd still die in dad's arms because you taught him to be selfless and fight for what he believes in. You were his safe place, he wanted to be anywhere you were and that's why he came back to save Wyatt because he wanted to save you even more. You were his hero mom and you're still mine." Piper smiled up at him, there he was, her fast talking, straight to the point son that had once upon a time come from the future to save his older brother. He was still there and she now knew that she hadn't failed him as his mother. He was twenty-two today and had been twenty-two went he left her; everything had come full circle.

**Fin**

-Girlygirl

P.S- I miss Chris and please review


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